Bryan’s first published illustrations appeared in Mallorn, the British Tolkien Society Magazine in 1969. In 1972, in collaboration with a fellow student - the cartoonist Bonk - he produced a weekly strip for the college newspaper.
After completing his education, Bryan worked in the underground press for five years, creating, writing and drawing the Brainstorm Comix series for Alchemy Press. The first three issues, the Chester P. Hackenbush Trilogy (1975 -78), were reprinted in one volume entitled BRAINSTORM! in 1982. Hackenbush was later Americanised into Chester Williams by Alan Moore for the DC series Swamp Thing where he continues to this day. Brainstorm six featured The Omega Report (1978), a popular story which blended Sci-Fi, rock music and comedy into a private detective pastiche. A twenty-five year anniversary book collecting this material in a 120 page trade paperback was published in 2000 entitled, again, BRAINSTORM!
In 1978, Bryan began Frank Fazakerly, Space Ace of the Future, a space opera parody for Ad Astra. This was later reprinted in one volume.
This year also saw the beginning of his epic saga The Adventures of Luther Arkwright in Near Myths, reprinted and expanded in 1981 in the ground-breaking comic art magazine Pssst! In 1982 the first collected volume of Luther Arkwright was published by Never Ltd. This book and Raymond Briggs When the Wind Blows, published in the same year, are usually considered the first British graphic novels, though Arkwright pre-dates the latter by three years.
Bryan then created over 100 illustrations for a series of German role-playing-game books and wrote and drew the Underground-style SF comedy-adventure strip Scumworld for a year in the weekly rock music newspaper Sounds.
In 1983 he began working for 2000AD. In collaboration with writer Pat Mills, Bryan produced three books in the popular Nemesis the Warlock series which were immediately reprinted by Titan Books. The first won an Eagle Award for “Best Graphic Novel” and the character Torquemada the ‘Favourite Villain’ award for three years running. He also worked on Judge Dredd by Alan Grant and John Wagner, which included production of full-colour strips for the IPC annuals and a twenty page RPG strip in the first issue of Diceman.
Returning to The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, he completed the story in a 9 issue comic book version published by Valkyrie Press. This was followed up by the three volume trade paperback reprint edition in Britain from Proutt and the American edition of the comicbook from Dark Horse. Nominated for eight Eagle awards at the 1988 UK Comic Art Convention, the Valkyrie edition won Bryan four. In 1989 Arkwright won the Mekon award given by Society of Strip Illustration for ‘Best British Work’.
The story, with its blend of science fiction, historical, espionage and supernatural genres, its experimental, narrative techniques and avoidance of sound effects, speed lines and thought balloons was a seminal work. Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, Steve Bissette, Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli and Rick Veitch among others have all acknowledged its influence. Text stories based on Arkwright have been written by SF authors John Brunner and Colin Greenland. It now has a strong cult following and has inspired fanzines devoted to the Arkwright mythos. The Luther Arkwright Role-Playing Game was published in 1993 by 23rd Parallel Games and a brand new Arkwright RPG by Hogshead Games is currently in production. The whole story has recently been reprinted in a single volume by Dark Horse. Last year saw the sale of the film option to Koukou Productions and the three-hour audio drama adaptation by Big Finish was released, staring David Tennant (the new Dr Who) as Arkwright.
Over the last 15 years Bryan has produced work for the American company DC Comics on titles such as Hellblazer (with Jamie Delano), Sandman (with Neil Gaiman) and the 200 page prestige format creator-owned series The Nazz (with Tom Veitch). The Spanish edition of the Constantine story The Bloody Saint won the Haxtur Award for best short story. The Sandman Special #1, The Song of Orpheus, was nominated for a Harvey Award. He wrote and drew Mask, a two-part Batman story for Legends of the Dark Knight. Nominated for two Eisner awards, it was reprinted in 1996 with the addition of one extra page in Dark Legends. The Spanish edition of Weird Romance, his four part story arc for The Dreaming, won the Haxtur Award for Best Writer.
For Tekno Comix he worked on two six-issue miniseries, drawing Teknophage (wr. Rick Veitch) and writing Shadowdeath (Art David Pugh). For Cult Press, he produced the covers for the cyberpunk comic series Raggedy Man.
Over the past twenty-five years Bryan has created a variety of comic strips and illustrations for publications as diverse as Imagine, Street Comics, Slow Death, Vogarth, the Paradox Press Big Books, Stardust, Transmetropolitan, The Radio Times, Wired, Spin, Knockabout, i.t. and the Manchester Flash. For Xpresso he teamed up with top European writer Matthias Schultheiss to create Brainworms. He has produced illustrations, including covers for DC Superheroes Monthly, Octobriana, Wizards of the Coast, Nemi and Computer and Video Games, art prints, posters, badges and logos. In 1992 he was honoured to be one of the contributors to the first Arzak portfolio published by Moebius’ Starwatcher Graphics. Knockabout Comics recently published X-directory - the Secret Files of Bryan Talbot, a thirty-two page collection of black and white short strips.
He’s also worked as a full-time graphic designer for the Longcastle advertising agency and British Aerospace.
In 1981 he worked with Science Fiction writer Bob Shaw on the Granada TV Arts programme Celebration to produce Encounter with a Madman (Dir. David Richardson) and in 1994 he produced the concept illustrations for a TV movie adaptation of a Ramsey Campbell story, Above the World.
Bryan has held six one-man Comic Art exhibitions in Lancashire, London, Tuscany, Finland, Sweden and New York, appeared in numerous others and is a frequent guest at international Comic festivals. In 1998, he taught a 5 day comic course at Ouro Preto University, Brazil and in 2004 he lectured at the Comic Art School in Florence..
His graphic novel The Tale of One Bad Rat, won an Eisner Award, a Comic Creators’ Guild Award, a Squiddy award, two UK Comic Art Awards, two US Comic Buyers’ Guide Don Thomson Awards , a Parent’s Choice Award and the Internet Comic Award for Best Graphic Novel. It was nominated for The National Cartoonists’ Society of America’s Rueben Award, a Harvey Award, a James Tiptree Jr. Award and a British Library Award.
In 1998 it appeared in the New York Times annual list of recommended reading and is a set text in some schools and universities. It is used in several child abuse centres in Britain, America, Germany and Finland. It was reprinted in seven European countries, winning more awards in Sweden, Spain and Canada. Portuguese, Brazilian and Czech editions should be out this year.
His 284 page Luther Arkwright graphic Novel, Heart of Empire, was published in nine parts by Dark Horse, winning an Eagle Award and nominated for two Eisners. It was published in one trade paperback volume and a signed, limited edition hardback in 2001 along with A CD-Rom version complete with over 65,000 words of commentary and a wealth of extra visual features. The Spanish edition won a Haxtur in 2003 and was nominated for an award at the Barcelona Festival in 2004.
Since finishing Heart of Empire and writing the annotations for the CD-Rom, Bryan has produced several illustrations and covers for various magazines and Internet web sites, including character sketches and frontispieces for Gwyneth Jones’s Bold as Love series of novels, and has drawn and painted Sire – a four-page Vampire strip for France’s Editions Carabas. He’s also written a couple of movie treatments, a proposal for a TV SF series and developed a concept for an animated cartoon series, Cherubs!, currently being drawn as a comic series by Mark Stafford.
Bryan recently pencilled the 4 issue miniseries The Dead Boy Detectives and the Secrets of Immortality, written by Ed Brubaker, and pencilled and inked Bag O’ Bones, written by Bill Willingham, for the Fables series by DC Vertigo and wrote and painted Memento, a twelve-page full colour “silent” strip for 2000AD
His new graphic novel is entitled Alice in Sunderland.
He has recently received the annual San Diego Comicon Inkpot Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Comic Arts". In Adult Comics by Roger Sabin (Routledge 1993) he is cited as one of the creators of the Graphic Novel form.
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